Macron’s 100 Days, Between Keeping Promises and Challenges

On 15 August, Emmanuel Macron was elected for 100 days with a series of campaign promises quickly implemented, but also some very expensive mistakes in terms of popularity and many challenges.

At the end of an extraordinary session of Parliament – a sequence that contrasted strongly with the wait-and-see attitude of his predecessor, François Hollande, in the summer of 2012 – two emblematic texts were definitively adopted.

One is on the moralization of political life and the second authorizes the government to reform the labor code by ordinances.

Other reforms will be undertaken at the beginning of the school year or in 2018, such as unemployment insurance, vocational training and pensions, to “renew the social model” of a country that has been suffering for decades from mass unemployment.

The disengagement of the head of state, which continues in August, nevertheless sounds like a warning. According to an Ifop survey released Friday, only 36% of the French say they are satisfied with the action of the Head of State, far from the 62% at the very beginning of his mandate.

“Emmanuel Macron leaves the state of grace to return to the atmosphere and assume the political cost of its arbitrations,” commented the political scientist Jérôme Fourquet (Ifop).

At issue, a series of unpopular measures that annoyed many Frenchmen, starting with officials ulcerated by the index point freeze or the recovery of the day of inadequacy, and retirees, furious at the rise in the CSG.

Some crossovers have also helped to blunt the image of the executive, such as the waltz-hesitation on the abolition of the housing tax for 80% of households or the knockdown on housing subsidies.

“The risk facing the president today is that the French are gradually shifting from + he is brilliant and succeeds everything that he undertakes + to + in fact, all that, it is com +”, has thus Underlined Jérôme Fourquet.

On the social front, the re-entry looks promiscuous while the content of the ordinances on labor law will be unveiled on 22 September. SOUTH and the CGT called for a day of action on 12 September and the insubmis of Jean-Luc Mélenchon at a “popular gathering” on 23.

The closure of the budget 2018 promises to be delicate with the promise of a reduction of 11 billion of the compulsory levies that will have to be combined with new economies.

– Top Gun –

Ⓒ AFP – Simon MALFATTO – | Percentage of people satisfied and dissatisfied with the actions of Presidents Holland and Macron, 100 days after their elections, according to an Ifop poll for Le Figaro.

On the form, Emmanuel Macron immediately imposed his style of “rare word”, distance with the press and hieratic postures. The tone was given on the evening of his election with a solitary march, very Mitterrandian, to the Pyramid of the Louvre.

But the fortress of a communication that wants to be over-controlled begins to crack. An “evolution” of the presidential communication will occur at the beginning of the school year, announced the spokesman of the government Christophe Castaner.

The movements of the president who give pride of place to the images have had contrasting results. His appearance as “Top gun”, molded in a combination of pilot on the air base of Istres, has thus unleashed a flood of comments mocking on the social networks.

The first weeks of the quinquennium were also plagued by a series of cases which resulted in the resignation of four figures of the government, including those of Richard Ferrand, a close relative of the first hour, and François Bayrou, a valuable centrist ally.

Another sensitive affair: the Elysee is preparing to clarify the “public role” of Brigitte Macron, Emmanuel Macron having renounced to endow the First Lady with a “status” while more than 300,000 Internet users have signed a petition to oppose.

The head of state, on the other hand, imposed himself from the start against the ogres of world diplomacy, Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump, while many wondered about his presidential stature.

His virile handshake with the US president in late May in Brussels or his bitter criticism of two Russian media alongside the Kremlin master soon after in Versailles marked the spirits. But the trial has yet to be transformed, especially on the European stage.

At the end of August, the head of state will perform a European mini-tour, before a summit at the Elysee on the 28th with Angela Merkel and the Italian and Spanish heads of government Paolo Gentiloni and Antonio Rajoy.